The Department of Health was formally created in 1988, through The Transfer of Functions (Health and Social Security) Order. Like many others, the Department with responsibility for the nation's health has had different names and included other functions over time.[3]

In the 19th century, several bodies were formed for specific consultative duties and dissolved when they were no longer required. There were two incarnations of the Board of Health (in 1805 and 1831) and a General Board of Health (1854 to 1858) that reported directly into the Privy Council. Responsibility for health issues was also at times, and in part, vested in local health boards and, with the emergence of modern local government, with the Local Government Act Office, part of the Home Office. In the early part of the 20th century, medical assistance was provided through National Health Insurance Commissions.

The first body which could be called a department of government was the Ministry of Health, created in 1919 through the Ministry of Health Act, consolidating under a single authority the medical and public health functions of central government. The co-ordination of local medical services was expanded in connection with emergency and wartime services, from 1935 to 1945, and these developments culminated in the establishment of the NHS in 1948.

In 1968, the Ministry of Health was dissolved and its functions transferred (along with those of the similarly dissolved Ministry of Social Security) to the newly created Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). Twenty years later, these functions were split back into two government departments, forming the Department of Social Security (DSS) and the current Department of Health.

The Department has six chief professional officers who provide it with expert knowledge and also advise the Ministers, other government departments and the Prime Minister. The Chief Medical Officer and Chief Nursing Officer are also directors of the department's board.

The publication of Professor Lord Darzi's review of the NHS[5] prompted criticism of the government and the department of health claiming that it paved the way for user charging,[6] and so contradicting the NHS Plan 2000 which stated that "user charges are unfair and inequitable in they increase the proportion of funding from the unhealthy, old and poor compared with the healthy, young and wealthy".[7] The report also introduces the concept of 'personal budgets'.

Darzi's report[5] splits previously integrated services into 'core', 'additional' and 'enhanced' services, which critics say will lead to abandoning the open-ended duty of care on which the NHS was founded.[6]

A "Deep Clean" initiative announced by the Department of Health was criticised by infection control experts and by the Lancet as a gimmick which failed to address the causes of in-hospital infections,[10] by the firms doing the work as an attempt to avoid paying for regular better cleaning,[11] and by NHS managers as ineffective.[11]

It also attracted criticism because only a quarter of the £60m funding for the scheme actually went to hospitals, and because a number of hospitals missed the completion target,[12] and as of June 2008 one in four NHS trusts was not meeting the government's standards on hygiene.[13]

The DH has attracted criticism for its disastrous handling of the outcome of Modernising Medical Careers, in particular in the changes it made to the specialist training of doctors and the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS). These changes left "29,193 junior doctors from the UK and overseas... chasing 15,600 posts..."[15] and resulted in accusations that the DH had broken the law by refusing to reveal scores to candidates.[16] Ultimately there was a judicial review and a boycott of the system by senior doctors across the country.[17] MTAS was eventually scrapped[18] and Patricia Hewitt, the then Secretary of State for Health, resigned[clarification needed] following accusations that she had lied to the House of Commons over the system.[19] Even after the abolition of MTAS, anger among the medical profession continued, with the British Medical Association commenting of the DH response that "Not only is this response too late, it does not go far enough".[17]

Successive DH ministerial teams have been criticised for repeated reorganisations of the NHS in England, where primary care commissioning responsibility in particular has been allocated to four different sets of organisations in the last ten years: PCGs,[clarification needed] small area PCTs (e.g. covering a rural local authority district or part of a city), larger-area PCTs (e.g. covering a whole County), PCT clusters (e.g. quarter of London or South of Tyne and Wear) and the currently unspecified Clinical Commissioning Groups. The tendency to introduce each reorganisation before its predecessor has had time to settle down and generate improved performance has attracted censure amongst healthcare professions in the UK and beyond, including reference to the ironic concept of 'redisorganization'.[21] Andrew Lansley's promise before the 2010 general election not to impose top-down reorganisation, followed by the instigation from ministerial level of one of the most fundamental NHS reorganisations yet envisaged, has generated especially widespread opprobrium, although some commentators have also suggested that this is to some extent completing the job started under the Blair administration.

The NHS as of 1 April 2013 is no longer situated within the DH, as NHS England also went 'live' at the same time. Therefore the DH has a further scrunity role of NHS services and commissioning. (See Arms Length Bodies section).

In recent years the Department of Health[22] and the NHS have come under considerable scrutiny for its use of IT.[23] Since being elected to power in 1997 the Labour government had sought to modernise the NHS through the introduction of IT. Although the policy is correct in aim, many claim its execution is lacking.[24]

In September 2008 a new leadership team was established, CIO for Health, Christine Connelly, and director of programme and system delivery Martin Bellamy. Previous CIO Richard Granger was believed to have been the most highly paid civil servant in the UK and was a controversial figure.[25] Connelly left the DH for a position in the Cabinet Office in June 2009 and was replaced by Tim Donohoe and Carol Clarke.

Connelly's role is to "deliver the Department's overall information strategy and integrating leadership across the NHS", according to the DH's website. That strategy, known as the National Programme for IT,[26] is intended to do nothing less than revolutionise NHS information workflow and is costed at about £12.7bn. The success or otherwise of Connelly's reign will be based on her promise to end delays of electronic medical records. She has said that if there is not clear progress by November 2009, a new plan could be hatched.

On the eve of the departure of Fujitsu as an outsourcing partner, Connelly said in April 2009 that she would open up sourcing to competition at "acute" sights in the south of England and offer toolkits by March 2010 to allow more local configuration of systems.[27]

In January 2009, MPs criticised DH for its confidentiality agreement with key supplier CSC and in March the Department was admonished by the Information Commissioner for its records management. In May 2011, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that he was considering scrapping the project.[28]

In response to Government spending reduction targets following the 2008-9 international financial crisis and subsequent recession, DH in common with several other Government Departments resorted to large-scale staffing reductions. In order to minimise redundancy costs, the predominant impact was upon DH staff not employed through a traditional civil service 'headcount' contract, with a resultantly emphasised effect upon more recent or innovative work-streams dependent upon seconded or externally hosted staff. This has attracted criticism from several of the professional and patient communities of interest concerned, for instance as regards the impact upon Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT)[29] and the withdrawal of the practical assistance available to the NHS and local authorities via the National Support Teams.

In Northern Ireland, abortion law is a criminal justice matter and is devolved.[32]

Wales

Under the Welsh devolution settlement, specific policy areas are transferred to the Welsh Government rather than reserved to Westminster. As the distinction between Government and actual health services is seen as less pronounced than in England, the main source of information about current developments is NHS Wales.